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Patterns of Ancient Indigenous Clothing Clickable terms are red on the yellow background |
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Map 1. Types of human clothing (after R.
Biasutti and G. Montadon) |
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GENERAL VESTOLOGY
Evolution of human clothing
The worldwide
distribution of clothing |
TYPOLOGY
OF HUMAN CLOTHING
Types of tribal clothing
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AFRICAN FOLK VESTOLOGY
African clothing from tree
bark
Cotton cloth, bandage, fabric
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TRIBAL HEADWEAR |
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Types of Ancient Tribal Clothing Beside shelters and huts, another means of protecting man
from climatic adversities is found in vestment, clothing, body-wear, footwear
and headwear. The principal difference divides axe-tool making
plant-gatherers and hunters producing flake tools. The former are remarkable
for fringed aprons with hanging stalks of grass, the latter employ
loin-cloths out of furs, hides and leather. The first combine vegetal
material with vertical fringing and prevail in the African and Oceanic
equatorial zone. The second make use of animal substance bound by horizontal
wrapping round the waist and dominate in Asiatic steppe grasslands. Table 1 provides a consistent outline of the evolution of
clothing. It suggests that human axe-tool cultures engaged in plant-gathering
and agriculture, went out barebreasted and wore fringed aprons out of stalks
of grass. The dominant principle of their clothes lay in the vertical
orientation of threads and fibres. Their ancestor was Homo erectus, who was responsible for the rise of the Oldowan
culture. His cultural level was characterised by pebble-stone choppers and
wearing vessels of water on the head. Such customs are observed even today in
the African Bantu people, Melanesians and Brazilian Amazonids. His progeny was differentiated in several stages. The first
splinter was formed by Georgids fathered by Homo georgicus (1,2 mill. years ago). He later lived in collective
longhouses sloping down to the earth and buried their dead in pithoi jars. The second splinter tore
off with Homo ergaster that
colonised southwest Europe and later gave rise to Micoquians. His bloom was
comparable to the dating of Georgids. The third offshoot originated in Orient
and southwest Asia. It concerned Acheulean cultures and its Yabrudian heirs.
His special traits are regarded in collective family houses looking like
multi-roomed labyrinths. Their favourite customs consisted in initiation rites
testing young boys by bull-leaping and bull-fighting. Each of these
continental chips shared the common tendency to use vertical designs of
herbal fibres.
On the other hand, Asiatic varieties of man such as Homo heidelbergensis gave preference
to horizontal designs of weaving and spinning. They lived in colder regions
of Asia and South Africa, hunter big-game or smaller ovicaprids. They put up
primitive clothes by wrapping leather hides from rabbits and antelopes. Their
wrapped their body in a horizontal direction. The first material was derived
from the animal kill, later it was replaced by a log piece of woven cloth. It
was used for binding turbans around the head, loin-cloths around the hips and
shoes around the feet. Such classifications of different
types of body-wear suggest intercontinental parallels linking ethnic groups
of remote continents and suggest their steady genetic paradigms. They
disclose prehistoric migrations and cognate kinship stemming from ancient
ancestors. |
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